July 2004

The week, she is nearly finished. The home-stand, not yet. Last night was another Saints game, fourth in the series against the Canaries, and the Saints dropped it. But the company was good, and in spite of “help” from friends, I survived a blind date at the ballpark. I think I scored bonus points for cooking a good dinner (walleye and wild rice) and opening car doors (apparently a lost art). There was a curious moment when Wendy (one of the vendors) informed me that a gal you dated fifteen years ago was here last night but was too embarrassed to come over to say hello. Sad to say, I’m not even certain who that could be. I lost some points for spilling a beer on her purse (I’m not sure if I spilled it or had help, but the purse is washable, and I think I was more upset than she was), being distracted too often by friends at the park, and nearly getting into an accident as we were talking on the way home (I kept looking over as she talked, rather than keeping my eyes on the road). In any case no one was killed, so I’ll call it a success for now.

In other ballpark news, the Right Reverend Randy is back in town, fresh from his internship in the desert of Oregon. He’ll be back in town for at least a year, and it’s good to have him back at the park.

The Shitty Tipper Database has a list of nearly 500 200 people who’ve stiffed their waiter or waitress on a bar-bill. Only one guy in Minneapolis that I can find, but then there isn’t a field for Minneapolis in the locations, so it’s hard to say how accurate that is. [boing boing]

Rock Wisdom is an online database of over 12,000 Sonq Quotes. That’s kinda cool. And the Punk History pages don’t actually say a whole lot about punk, but there are some excellent bits within there. Check out, for example, the page on Genesis, ELP & Yes: No-one could understand what Genesis were prattling on about including Gabriel! Fun stuff!

Months ago I bought some new sheets from Bed Bath & Beyond. Last night I decided to break ’em out as a reward to myself for an evening with no fatalities, only to find out that there were no pillowcases in the package with the sheets. Damnit. They’re nice sheets and they’re still in stock, but I don’t have the receipt anymore, and don’t feel like taking them off my bed just so I can return them to get a new complete set. Yeah, I know. There are a lot worse problems a guy could have. Maybe I’ll deal with that tomorrow.

Yesterday was another good day. I think I get to knock off half of the bugs remaining on my plate this morning (after verifying the fix) and I think I’m now clueful about the remaining bugs. That’s a lot better than when I woke up yesterday, and gives me hope that I’ll finish off the rest of them before the week is done. Then again, I’ve got a lot of non-work stuff to do today (more on that tomorrow, perhaps), so we’ll see how it turns out.

Last night, at the Saints game, Adam Olow hit his first and second dingers of the season. Add in homers from Scott Samuels and Tim Merritt, and the Saints just squeaked past the Canaries. It was a great game, interrupted briefly by a couple showers that scared away about half the crowd, but I just stayed put in my seat, figuring at least I was keeping the seat dry that way. One of the Fraters (Saint Paul?) was there and stopped by to say hello, too. Hello!

PapaScott is looking to put his web services into Solitary Confinement. That’s a fine idea, I think, and I hope he documents everything he does so the rest of us can learn from him. [papascott]

Phil Sen asks, if Communist China were to try to invade Taiwan, Who Would Win the War? Well, it’s complex, but basically he figures that if the US gets enough warning, China would end up losing. It’s an interesting analysis. Let’s hope Taiwan doesn’t push things so it has to be war.

Here’s an interesting idea. If you want to read an article that’s behind a subscriber-only firewall, and bug me not doesn’t have a password for the site, you can often engage in some Dead Sea Googling to find the full text of the article. Cool idea.

Infoworld is experiencing RSS growing pains as lots of dumb clients hit their servers all at the top of the hour, whether or not things have changed. I see a bunch of repeat hits on the RSS here, but I don’t really worry about it. If my server can’t keep up with it, I’ll either rewrite the code to be more efficient (some caching would probably help a bit), or finish upgrading my server. Then again, I don’t see anything like Infoworld’s traffic. [slashdot]

Unsolicited consultants are Changing the Face of Web Surfing by doing guerilla redesigns of corporate websites that suck. I sometimes think that’s the kind of thing we should do once in a while to get a little more publicity, but then I remember that I’m already pretty darned busy. But I’d really like to see some websites out there redone so they actually work. [wired]

Yesterday was a lot of fun. The Saints didn’t play great baseball, but they got handed a win in the 9th by the Canaries, and not every win during the season has to be pretty. It almost makes up for the two wins they handed Gary last weekend (well, maybe it half makes up for those two losses).

And it was a beautiful day. Plenty of sunshine, and enough wind to keep it from feeling too hot. I apparently put enough sunblock on, and only got burned in the one location I completely missed (top of my chest, where the V of a v-neck shirt would be — that area’s been covered by a beard for 16 years, and I’m still not used to thinking it might see any sun).

It was nice taking a day off in the middle of the week like that, but today I’ve got to get back to work. Life goes on, and while I can squeeze out a day here or there for a ballgame, I’ve got to keep at the work if I want to be able to pay the bills. The biggest drawback is that today feels like Monday again. I guess there are a lot worse complaints a guy could have.

Jim’s finished his writeup of the One Day in July street festival. It’s a good story. Go read it. [jim]

Can there be Free Speech Behind the Razor Wire surrounding free speech zones set up by the SS, like the one in Boston this week? Probably not. Good thing not too many people are going into the cage. [wired]

Yesterday was a good day. The truck just needed a new battery (and got it). The rest of the errands were all attended to before noon, leaving the afternoon for work, and then there was a Saints game that they won, complete with people sitting on the warning track (okay, that part wasn’t the greatest, but it’s apparently the first time it’s happened in St. Paul since 1916).

Today, I start the day with a daytime Saints game, including breakfast in the parking lot, and a bunch of sun-block. I’m expecting it’ll be a pretty fun day, but not the most productive work-day of my career. I guess there’s a chance I’ll come straight home from the game and have a productive evening, but I think work is something I’ll worry about in the latter half of the week. Maybe it’ll be raining then, which should make concentrating on work easier.

In a gardening related note, yesterday I harvested the first of the hot peppers from my garden. There are two more that are almost ripe, and over a dozen that should be ready sometime next week or so. Food is going to be spicier than usual for the next few weeks, I think.

And since I’m talking about upsetting stomachs, how about a day full of politics? It ain’t pretty, but I found myself having to stare, just like gawking at a car-crash on the side of the freeway. This is what happens when I decide that since I’m not getting the links done in time for people to read them before work starts, I’ll put things together before I go to sleep.

Our local crazy-lady state Legislator lifts foe’s literature. She was up in New Hope hanging campaign fliers for a DFL challenger, and was caught taking down fliers from the incumbent Republican up there. And yeah, there is a reason to vote this year, since the whole MN House, including her, is on the ballot. [press-patch]

In a fine bit of commentary, sdb talks about Bush’s possible masterstroke later this year, and decides that Kerry doesn’t stand a chance. Whether he’s right or not, an essay like this from him usually means he’s thought pretty hard about the issue, and he’s been right more often than not in the past. [sdb]

Speaking of the convention, do you think all the added security around makes a difference? Here’s a quick look at What’s Wrong with Security at the DNC in Boston as of Monday the 19th. There’s been some improvements, but I find myself wondering how many of those holes got plugged. [flutterby]

Update 0945: As it turns out, it was just the battery in the truck. The factory battery was about five years old, and that’s about all they’re good for. But when it went, it went good. Apparently at least one cell was dead-shorted inside the battery. My mechanic was surprised I hadn’t had more problems with it before now. But it’s been replaced and everything is good now.

Well. You’ll forgive me if I sound a bit grumpy. I’m spending Monday morning waiting to hear back from the garage about just what my truck needs in order to be happy again, but it’s either a dead battery, a scrozzed alternator, or something otherwise leaking away the happy electrons when they’re all supposed to be staying put. I’m not sure which, but if I don’t drive it every day, it won’t start. More about that in a bit.

Anyway, to the weekend. Saturday was the big blog party thing at Keegan’s. I didn’t make the One Day In July thing, and I’ll leave coverage of that to Jim or someone else who was actually there. The blog party was okay. I showed about 4:30 and the Fraters and King were there, and by 5:30 the joint was rockin’. Or something. There sure were a lot of geeks. The Fraters and Mitch have reviews. Me, I had an okay time, mostly talking to Chaz, Chuck and Odin. Chaz and I walked down to Pracna for the fireworks and chanced into a table. As an extra bonus, they have the $2 beers from 9-11, which covered the fireworks show pretty nicely.

Sunday, I had planned to make the journey up to Mom’s, then stop at Target on the way home to restock, and then do some laundry. But as I climbed into the truck around 10:30, I discovered that the battery was dead again, and rather than a nice purring from the starter, I just got an annoying clicking sound and a red light on the dash. That pretty much ruined both my plans and my mood for the day, and I spent the day watching stupid things on the television and waiting for it to be Monday so I could have the garage fix my truck. Didn’t get nothin’ done.

Well, it’s happened. On Friday the Minneapolis council OKs smoking ban. Based on what I saw when they enacted the ban in California, this will mean that about one in ten bars will end up closing. These will be the smaller bars that tend to run on the brink of profitability. Losing even a handful of their smoking customers will make them uneconomical, especially as the bar will still smell of smoke for the next year or two unless a major renovation is done. More profitable bars may see some drop in profit as people stay home, but many have already been putting in outdoor seating for smokers (we’ll see how that works in mid-January). Depending on which suburbs follow suit, you may see a lot more people driving to Fridley or Hilltop for a beer and some smokes. In the long run, the bars will rebound, as they have in California, but if you’ve got a favorite dive-bar, you’ll probably want to visit it as much as possible between now and next March, because it may not be around after that. [jim]

There’s been a lot of noise lately about newspaper sites requiring registration to read articles. Both of the local papers do it. Wired says We Don’t Need No Stinkin’ Login and points out BugMeNot and some other services you can use to bypass the registration process. BugMeNot also has a Registration form for any employee, partner, affiliate or legal representative of any site which enforces compulsory user registration. Cool! Read through the whole form. It’s got some real gems in there. [wired and boing boing]

Here’s a little story from a man who Fathered a Terror Suspect, or rather gave his son a name that’s on the persons of interest list in CAPPS. Probably the simplest way for his son to fly is to change his name, which makes me (and Claire) wonder why terrorists wouldn’t just do that, too. [claire]

I’ve had people wonder why I’m concerned about privacy. Well, part of the reason is that I’d like to be able to order a Pizza without having the conversation that plays out in the movie. While I fully expect that sort of thing to happen eventually, I’d like to postpone it as long as possible. We’re having a little conversation along those lines over on Flutterby, too.

Once again I find myself posting later than I’d like to. I know (from looking at my server logs) that a lot of my regular readers try to catch up on my site in the morning before they start work at 9am Central time, and I’ve been either really close to 9 or just after lately. I’m not sure what the solution is, but this morning I was awake in plenty of time, and was just trying to comment on the stories I found during my usual news-gathering. It look a little longer than usual.

As I say, I’m not sure what the solution is, but so far I’ve just tried to do a little more surfing in the evening before going to sleep to get a jump-start on the morning. That doesn’t really help, since I end up getting to sleep later, which means waking up later. I suppose I could completely turn my schedule around and sleep in the middle of the day, and spend all night awake and working on this for the day, but that seems a little drastic for a project that just barely covers its own hosting costs (the Google ad revenues are now up to the point where they’re paying what I would charge a customer to host a website like this, but that’s about it).

Oh well. I could go on, but that would just make this even later than it already is. I’m sorry if I’m messing up your morning read. I’d rather not, but I need to find some new solution to the problem, and I haven’t yet.

jwz has posted CensorZilla, a list of snippets that needed to be cut out of Mosaic’s browser when they sold it to Netscape. Possibly not-safe-for-work, due to language. [jwz]

Verizon Wireless has filed the First Lawsuit Over Cell Phone Spam against some spammers who targetted their cell-phone customers. It’s not often that I wish cell-phone companies good luck, but this is one of them. [slashdot]

Acxiom has huge amounts of consumer data, and is one of the world’s largest database companies. A Data Theft Suspect Busted recently for stealing some of that data is going to trial, and that’s good, since he’s been using the information to spam people, but I think there needs to be some sort of liability for Acxiom, too. This is the second time data’s been stolen from them, and if they’re not willing, or able, to actually protect the data, they need to face some penalties. [wired]

Whew. Things are much more comfortable after last night’s storm. The sky got that ominous yellow color for a little while, and then there was some rain. Today, the dewpoints are supposed to drop into the 50s and that feels a ton better. Just in time for me to need to mow the lawn again this weekend.

Some days I surprise myself. Yesterday was one of those. I expected I’d need to spend all day tracking down a particularly nasty bug, but after a brief flash of inspiration, I looked to see what changes other people had made that might affect things. Bingo! The problem wasn’t mine at all, but rather someone who had clobbered a bug fix I’d put in over six months ago. It would be frustrating if I hadn’t found it as quickly as I did, but that bit of inspiration meant that I was actually ahead of my self-imposed schedule on work, and I took the opportunity for a mid-afternoon nap, and woke up feeling much refreshed. Some last-minute updates to the ADHOC site and I finished the day feeling pretty good, except for a bit of JavaScript that isn’t doing what I think it should.

Today, I think I’m going to try to knock off a few more bugs, do a little noodling on some of my websites (I desperately need to update the Better Nerds site one of these days), and go out grocery shopping so I can restock the pantry. Seems like a pretty good plan for the day to me.

There are other companies out there where Benefits go soft, including things like a shorter work week. One of the reasons I started my own business was that I was looking for a shorter and more flexible work week. Now, a little more than five years later, bigger companies are catching up. [press-patch]

In an interesting development from Iraq, Al-Sabah reports Iraqi political sources on anonymity affirmed that the detaining of [Khudir] al- Dori by the Iraqi security departments resulted in the seize of three nuclear heads missiles. … The sources were quoted as saying that these nuclear missiles were found in tunnel underground at six meters length were covered carefully to mislead sensitive scientific apparatuses detecting for these weapons. It was reported by UPI as well (and later retracted), but the Instapundit is reporting that Reuters is saying the story is stupid. I expected to hear more about this, but the only update (aside from the retraction) I can find is from Al-Sabah, which doesn’t really say anything new, and a brief mention in a market update which pointed out that the dollar rose on the report. [instapundit]

Skyway News Online has an excellent article on the history behind the One Day In July street festival Jim’s been working on. Check it out if you’re interested in either Minnesota history or labor politics. It’s an interesting story. It’s also interesting how the Teamsters aren’t actually having anything to do with this year’s commemoration.

A handful of McDonald’s restaurants are now offering a A Drive-Through Lane to the Next Time Zone, with a remote call center taking the orders in the drive-through. Besides having people whose only job is to take orders, the system snaps a picture of the driver, and that’s used at the pickup window to make sure they’re giving the right person the right order. One of the seven locations that uses the system is in Brainerd. [papascott]

You may have heard about the article by the woman who was worried by some Syrians on a Northwest flight back around the start of July. Turns out, it was just the backing band for The Syrian Wayne Newton who apparently don’t know much about airplane etiquette. Most importantly, nobody bothered to talk to the guys, or they might have found that out at the time. [lileks]

Got up to 90 yesterday, but the dewpoint was in the 70s all day, and it was pretty darned hot-feeling out there. Hot enough that I waited until 10pm before hauling out the trash so they could pick it up this morning. Hot enough that the low temp this morning was 72. And no real relief in sight for today either. I’m guessing today will be a day spent mostly in the air-conditioned bliss of my house.

It’s probably just as well the weather is going to keep me close to home today. I’ve got most of the domestic things in order at the moment (aside from a pressing need to do laundry, but that’s a good background task), and need to spend the day concentrating on fixing bugs for a client. I need to earn my keep around here, and I’ve had a reasonably productive week so far, billing hours for four different clients in the past two days, and need to focus on the client with the next looming deadline today. All of the tasks have been achievable, and I’ve been making good progress, and that’s a darned good feeling. If I can maintain that kind of productivity, it’ll make the overworked feelings I’ve had so far in July seem worthwhile.

It’s probably too late for you if you haven’t already registered, but ADHOC (the conference formerly known as MacHack) begins tonight. For the first time in a bunch of years, I’m not going to be there. I’ll miss it, but there was no way I was going to be ready to head out of town again this soon. It was only yesterday that I finally finished the to-do list I made when I got home from WWDC.

Here’s a letter on the Current World Situation that purports to be from a father to his sons. It’s been circulating the net for much of July, even though it’s dated in May, with various numbers of footnotes and such (that make me wonder if it was really a father-to-sons email). This seems to be the most complete version, and it’s something worth looking at, I think. Meanwhile, in Another strong ally, sdb says that now that the Philippines have pulled their troops out of Iraq, it’s Japan that’s probably next in the terrorist crosshairs. [sdb]

Whether you like his politics or not, Lileks sometimes posts cool pictures. He’s just put up a bunch of pictures of the Minneapolis Riverfront, which is the only update to the Minneapolis section this year. Pretty pictures of places I walked past a lot more often when I lived closer to the river. [lileks]

One of the bigger local news items lately has been the proposed smoking bans in Minneapolis and St. Paul, and the newly-enacted ban in Bloomington. Mitch has some commentary in Smoked Out and The Inmates Rule the Cities. My take: I had left California before they put the smoking ban in place there, but within a week of it going into effect, most of the smoky dive-bars I liked had closed. I fear the same thing will happen here, and I’ll be without regular hangouts. Yeah, I probably shouldn’t spend so much time in bars, so maybe it’ll be good for me, but that doesn’t mean I have to like it. I’m pretty sure this sort of nannying from elected officials will be another one of those if you support this, I’ll never vote for you again kind of things. [mitch]

Here’s a fine poster that comments on current politics. And as an added bonus, from the comments, America needs another JFK like it needs a hole in the head. More seriously, I remembered Bush’s betrayal of us in both the USA-PATRIOT act, and in his support for renewing the AWB. Can’t vote for Bush, won’t vote for Kerry. So do I go with Badnarik, Nader, or start shopping the list of wingnuts again? Hell, with no local elections this year, maybe it’s time to just sit one out, even if voting for Vermin Supreme, the candidate from the Misinformed Citizens of America is tempting.

From Capitol Hill Blue (back in 1999): America’s Criminal Class: The Congress of the United States says it’s first in a series. Me, I don’t see why anyone would make a loan to a candidate given the information in this article (many default on campaign loans, even if they win). Almost one fifth have run at least two failed businesses (proving they don’t learn, either), and there’s a laundry list of other reasons you wouldn’t want to hang out with your elected representatives. Ugh. No indications that things have changed in the past five years, either. [fark!]

As I sat here typing this morning, I realized that my schedule is filling up for the rest of July, and most of August already. I was supposed to have lunch with a friend yesterday, but had to beg off due to some work I was doing, and at the rate things are going, we may not be able to reschedule until August. And there are plenty of other things looming on the horizon, too.

For the moment though, I need to concentrate on the shorter-term. I’ve got plenty to do today, and that looks like it’ll be the case for the next couple days. This weekend has already filled up, and it’s a darned good thing the Saints aren’t home, or I’d be complaining about having too much to do again. As it is, there’s plenty on the calendar, but I made sure to leave some time to just putter around the house, too.

There’s also the Northern LeagueAll-Star game tonight, but I have no idea if it’s even going to be possible to hear it on the radio. Probably just as well.

It’s not announced on their website yet, but The Hub Bike Co-Op is moving to the West Bank (301 Cedar Ave So.) next to Midwest Mountaineering. This gives those of us who avoid chain stores another option in addition to Varsity Bike Shop and Freewheel. [jim]

Go Ahead, Call Us Cowboys compares two border towns, one in Alaska, to one in Canada. It’s a fun little story, but I worry that much of the US is becoming more like the Canadian town described in the article. [instapundit]

The Man Who Helped Kill CAPPS II used to work for the NSA and lived in Eastern Europe before the fall of the Iron Curtain, so he had a pretty good idea about the kind of things governments can and do dig up about people, which is why he fought CAPPS II. [wired]

In PHP And The Brain, jr talks about the article I linked to about PHP5. He’s not sure about the plans for PHP to take over the world, and gives some reasons why. Now I’m thinking about it more, and I don’t think I mind PHP’s plans for world domination. But then I’ve been a fan of scripting languages for quite a while, thanks mostly to Dave Winer and UserTalk. They may not be the most efficient way to get the job done from a machine’s point of view, but with processing power getting cheaper all the time, making the machine work harder so humans don’t have to is the right direction to go, I think. And jr doesn’t see the need for another scripting language, but I’m one of the few folks who never really grokked perl or python, but knows PHP, so I’m fine with PHP grabbing for a bigger piece of the pie. Now I just need to find the time to migrate all my old code from PHP 3…. [jr]

Sometimes a weekend can just be too much fun. This was one of those weekends. I woke up about 6am this morning and was up for an hour, but then went back to sleep, since I was just beat. I’m feeling better after a couple extra hours of sleep, but I suspect it’s still going to be a low-energy day.

The big news of the weekend was that the Saints swept Winnipeg. In the first half of the season, Winnipeg was a tough team, and was contending with the Saints and Fargo for first place. This weekend, they weren’t the same team at all. They had a ton of errors, and while Friday and Sundays games both ended up being close, yesterday was only close because Mark Wells and Eddie Aucoin had a tough outing and gave up six runs in the eighth.

This is kinda cool. Plankton Cool Off With Own Clouds, formed when compounds they release serve as the seeds for cloud formation. They release those compounds when they’re getting too much UV, and the resulting clouds block it out. [wired]

I need to work harder on coming home from dinner before midnight. Just sayin’.

Not Vanilla is offering Braille t-shirts and tops, printed with slogans such as naughty. Currently only the girl shirts are shipping, and they’re CDN$49 for the t-shirts, or $39 for the tops. [boing boing]

Interested in finding out more about some tall building? Emporis may be the solution. For example the Buildings of Minneapolis page lets you dig into the local high-rises of more than twelve stories. Coolness. [lileks]

I always hate it when I have to do any work on Windows. Yesterday and today, I’ve needed to update a MSVC++ project for a client to reflect the changes I made to the CodeWarrior project on the Mac. But first I needed to spend an hour or so in Windows Update so my computer could be connected to the internet without getting infected immediately. Even that, by itself, is a huge disincentive to me to even want to work on Windows. Yeah, I know I have to do software updates on my Mac too, but I’m using my Mac every day, so they’re small updates and don’t bother me. I power on the Windows machine once every couple months, so an update there is an all-morning affair.

Oh well, I guess I shouldn’t gripe too much about it, but it’s a big part of why I do as little work as possible on Windows. Even after I’d done all the Windows Updates, I still needed to do the actual work, then recompile everything, fix my mistakes and generally just spend time living with an environment I don’t especially like. I do end up appreciating my Mac a lot more after one of these forays though.

Fred Reed says that All Loyalty Is Local and things have gotten to the point where the government in Washington DC, rather than being relatively remote and benign, has started treating us all as suspects, and the normal reaction is to reciprocate. [endwar]

Joel Rosenberg says to relax about the judge striking down the carry-permit law. Mostly because if his decision were to stand as precedent, it would mean something like five hundred laws passed over the past ten years would have to be struck down. To me, that sounds like a pretty good start.

Here’s one reason to keep things from your doctor: Man loses license after telling doctor about drinking. I’m generally pretty forthcoming with the medical folks I see about once a year, but stuff like this makes me wonder. I don’t think I should have to worry about trading off accuracy for being left alone by the government though, and when doctors start acting as snitches for the state, that’s exactly the kind of tradeoff a guy needs to consider. Even if he only drinks a six-pack per day. [claire]

Here’s another shocker. Some people don’t like the intrusions of the TSA: India ‘stripped’ of its dignity, literally. But it’s not so much that some Indian mucky-muck got strip-searched that bothers me. It’s that mucky-mucks are expecting special treatment at all. Heck, the current measures are enough to make regular guys drop trou, so why shouldn’t everyone be subjected to indignities? Or hell, just make us all fly naked. Now there’s a pretty mental picture for you…. [claire]

Update 1215: The drier’s connected, and I don’t smell any gas leaks. That took quite a bit longer than I figured, plus I still need someone skinnier than me to help finish duct-taping the vent ducts together, but it ought to at least work. First load of laundry is just about to hit it. Wish me luck.

Light on the notes today. I’m still trying to get some stuff done around the house, and so far I’m batting .000 on finding a handyman who is available and will actually return my phone calls. Suggestions are still welcome.

There was a radio Interview with Jim about the One Day in July street party he's been organizing on KFAI. It aired yesterday at 11 AM, but you can still catch it in the KFAI Archives. Just scroll down to “Catalyst” and stream the most recent show. [jim]

Yesterday, Minnesota’s gun permit law shot down in Ramsey County Court. That means that until something else happens, Minnesota will revert to the old system where local sheriffs have discretion whether to issue a permit or not. Expect another battle in the legislature over this one. There’s more in the PiPress article: Handgun law thrown out.

Monica ponders the source of the Unwellspring that she sees in the U.K. I find myself wondering if perhaps she saved the world there, maybe one of the handymen I’ve called this week would actually return my call. Yesterday I got all the parts I needed to hook up my drier, and I’m going to attack that after breakfast this morning. If you don’t see a posting tomorrow, maybe I’ll have blown myself up. At least that would make the to-do list shorter….

I think it’s my lot in life to spend this summer tired. Between trying to make my house my own and trying to keep up the normal routine of going to all the Saints games I possibly can, while still getting some work done during the summer, and trying to have a social life with the folks who don’t go to baseball games, there’s just a lot going on.

That said, I promised something of a recap, so let’s get to it:

Friday night was baseball. I was on my own, sorta, but gave Pete one of my tickets so he could sell both of his, and got a couple beers in exchange. Woo! Fun was had, and I don’t think we scared Angie’s parents too much.

Saturday — Went to mom’s for lunch, but she’d forgotten I was coming up, and was in town shopping, so I sat for an hour keeping her dog company until she got home. Then we had a hurried lunch, a bit of conversation, and I was headed back for the Saturday evening Saints game. Nothing too exciting, and I was at the game solo, and mostly sat by myself, mostly enjoying it.

After getting home and going to sleep, I got woke up in the middle of the night by a couple minutes of near-continuous thunder and lightning. I thought about getting up to close some windows, but the breeze coming in was cool enough that I figured I’d deal with any wetness in the morning. Turns out there was just a little puddle in the bedroom I’m still working on, but since it’s mostly empty, that was just a few seconds work to deal with. I worried about Sunday’s game a bit, but that was a problem for the morning, too.

Sunday, as I mentioned, I went to the ballgame. Scott & Kat had invited Odin to the game. Interesting to meet the man behind the infowaif, and we had a generally pleasant conversation. I don’t expect we’ll be bestest buddies, but I avoided the urge to bop him in the nose.

After the game, I hung out in the parking lot for a while. All of our regular tailgating crowd was gone, so it was quiet time mostly, as Brian & I had been baking in the sun all afternoon. There were a group of folks next to us who had been in the Windsor clubhouse, and apparently had consumed plenty of beer. At one point, they asked me to come over and take a group photo of them, but after we’d all assembled, someone pointed out that one of the gals was missing. Oh well, take the photo anyway. A cute blonde made the 1-800-BABE comment as I was walking back to my chair. When the missing gal had returned, I got asked over to take another photo, and after that was done, it was suggested that they needed a picture of the photographer — With all the girls! The cute blonde came running over and leapt into my arm (my left hand was holding a beer or something), and I managed not to drop her (or the beer) while a couple photos were snapped. The rest of the gals didn’t join in. Drat.

Maybe I missed an opportunity, but I’d noticed that between the two sets of photos, one of the guys there had been putting his arm around her protectively, and was glaring at me during the second set of pictures. No point it pushing the issue, I figure.

After returning home and unpacking the cooler, I took a nap. Between the sun and the beer, I was happily tired and loving the cool air in my conditioned bedroom. When I woke up about 7pm, I noticed Spencer had called, leaving a message about a gathering that evening, so I headed out to meet him and a few other friends for dinner and a beer. Good times, and more compliments on the short hair. Dang! I wasn’t really looking for that sort of reaction, but it makes me happy to get it.

Yesterday was hot. I got most of the backlog handled in the morning while the house wasn’t unbearably hot, and then spent the afternoon napping in my air-conditioned bedroom while waiting for the handyman I’d contacted to call back. He never did. Come evening, I’d had enough and decided to install the new air conditioner in the living room window myself and worry about whether the weight of the thing would warp the vinyl window to the point that it won’t close come winter sometime later. Like maybe winter. By the time I was ready to go to bed, the living room (and more importantly the corner of it that makes up my office) was cool enough where I didn’t break out in a sweat just sitting down. Ahh, bliss.

Well, that’s the update. Long enough to satisfy those who don’t bother clicking through on the links, I hope.

In the course of going through the email backlog yesterday, I updated my Magical Macintosh Key Sequences and Text-wrangling help pages, as well as the text-wrangling routines I use while typing here. Hopefully things will be a little more consistent typography-wise.

This Essay: Postponement of the November election covers a lot of the high points about the story that was reported in Newsweek on Sunday about the Bush administration taking steps to postpone the election in November in case of a terrorist attack. Don’t forget that in spite of the British burning DC in 1812 and sacking the White House, there were still elections. I think postponing the elections would be extremely ill-advised. While some folks are making noise about it, others are curiously quiet. I’d be worrying a lot about the quiet ones if I were considering tinkering with the elections. [scripting]

The Strib says that the government should Emphasize U.S. determination to have an election, since as President Lincoln said, We cannot have free government without elections, and if the rebellion could force us to forgo or postpone a national election it might fairly claim to have already conquered and ruined us. [strib]

Hmm. Police State? The National Concealed Carry for Cops Bill passed last week, giving police the ability to carry concealed nationwide, while the rest of us poor schmucks have to deal with state governments to get a permit to carry legally, and then maybe it won’t be recognized in another state. [survival arts]

Ron Paul says that the questions asked in the American Community Survey are None of Your Business! He tried to shut it down, but it’s gone through, and now the Census people will be asking nosy questions every year, instead of just every ten years, and the questions are going to get even nosier. Plus you can get fined $1000 per question if you don’t want to answer. [survival arts]

Lots happened over the weekend. I’d like to go into details about it, but I’m pressed for time, since I couldn’t get to sleep last night and tossed and turned until about 2am. Thus I overslept. And there’s a ton to get done this morning before the day heats up, so I’m going to have to put off the weekend update until later in the week.

Well, maybe a short teaser. Baseball. Mom forgetting I was coming for lunch on Saturday. More baseball. Lightning, thunder and rain. Baseball with “Layne.” Having a cute gal jump on me in the parking lot (after she asked if my phone number was 1-800-BABE). Nap. Dinner and drinks with friends I haven’t seen for a while. And that brings us to the tossing and turning.

The PiPress has an article about The day disco died, but doesn’t mention the Saints promotion this past Saturday at all. Then again, that’s probably just as well. It wasn’t all that impressive. [press-patch]

Mark your calendar: Mitch Berg is Having A Party on the 24th at Keegan’s and Minnesota bloggers are invited. I’ve already said I’ll probably make it, since the Saints are out of town that weekend. [mitch]

Yesterday went much better than Wednesday. The furnace-duct-cleaning guys showed up earlier than expected, and were done by noon. I spent the afternoon working on my writeup of this year’s WWDC and then went out for beers in the evening, first with Bill & Mark, and then later with Scott & Kat who’d left a message on my phone. Fun all around, but it slowed me down this morning. Oops.

If you’re interested in attending a Saints game this evening or tomorrow evening with me, I’ve got a spare ticket. Preference given to those who haven’t been to a game with me yet, since I know of at least a couple readers who fit that category. Note that it might rain, which means we might get wet. If that sounds good to you, Give me a shout.

Jim’s been working on a Street Fest honoring the 1934 Minneapolis Truckers’ Strike and thinks you should all go. The Minnesota Historical Society has a good history of what happened. You can also check out the 1934 strike committee’s webpage [jim]

In his Surfin’ Safari blog, Dave Hyatt talks about the extensions to HTML that Apple’s making to support Dashboard and the real-world standards compliance the team tries to adopt, which means they’re going to have to add some tags that were previously only used by IEWin. I dunno. I’d prefer everything move to XHTML (my site has), but Dave says there are many problems with XHTML. I can’t argue that, but I’d prefer to see browsers get fixed, rather than adding more cruft to the already-dead HTML 4.0. [scripting]

There was a contest among link-spammers recently to see who get could the most google-juice for a previously unused two-word phrase. After they spent a month building link-farms and such, Anil Dash’s Single Post Wins Google Contest handily. If you want good page-rank on google, the best thing you can do is to write really good material. [boing boing]

Yesterday… Where to start? In the morning, I guess. I started the day with a bit of work, then headed outside about 10am to get the garden weeded and the lawn mowed. I wanted to do that before the day warmed up (it got up to around 70, but 60 is a pretty comfortable lawn-mowing temperature for me) and before the delivery men showed up with my new drier and air-conditioner at 2 in the afternoon. All went well, and by noon, I was somewhat tired and ready for lunch. The garden isn’t perfectly weeded, but you can at least see all the plants that belong there now, and the lawn is all the same length again.

So it was a good morning. Productive and satisfying. The afternoon? Not so much. Rather than diving into lunch right away, I started out trying to plug a security hole I’d been warned about, figuring it would only take a few minutes. After an hour of fumbling about on my own, and an hour on the phone with tech support, all I succeeded in doing was taking down my DSL connection. So I took a break for a late lunch while waiting for the delivery men.

Once the appliances were dropped off (but not installed — Minneapolis doesn’t allow the delivery men to connect up driers), I headed over to my ISP to get the problems with my DSL connection sorted out. Shortly after 4pm, everything was working again, and I’d had quite enough for the day. I plowed through the email, responded where I’d needed to, and realized I’d screwed up one employee’s check in the monthly payroll that had run late because I was out of town on the first. It’s nothing I can’t correct next month once I’ve figured out where I went wrong, but it served as a pretty fine capper for the afternoon.

Today, sometime around noon, Minnegasco is going to send over some people to clean the ducts of my furnace (it’s a gravity system and there are no records of the last time the ducts were cleaned — I can see the dust in them, though) so it’ll be ready for next winter. I booked this appointment in May, so today it shall be, lest I incur the wrath of the scheduling gnomes and get rescheduled for next February.

But between the new drier sitting forlornly in the basement, waiting for a piece of gas flex, and all the other projects around the house that need to be done, I’m thinking of hiring a handyman to help me make some progress on them. Do any of my readers know of a good handyman? Lileks pointed to one a while back, but that website didn’t have contact information earlier this week (or was hitting an error trying to display it), and I suspect they’re probably getting plenty of business anyhow.

A little short on links today, too. Funny how that follows from not having a network all afternoon yesterday.

Burt Rutan’s got SpaceShipOne Back on Course, and should be offering official notice soon to the X-prize people. That means SpaceShipOne will be flying sometime after Labor Day. [instapundit]

Here’s some summer reading, perhaps. Greg and Mike on Bikes are riding from the left coast (Florence, Oregon) to Ohio and beyond. They’re documenting their trip online. [fark!]

Speaking of driving across the country, have you heard about the guy who took a Blindfolded Drive Across America? What the heck? Was that the car going down the right lane of the freeway with the left blinker on for about twenty miles? According to the map, he never got near Minnesota, so it must have been some other idiot. [some guy]

I spent yesterday pretty much as expected – catching up after having been out of town for a week, followed by a weekend of Saints games. There were bills to be paid, invoices to be submitted, and clients to update. I also surprised myself a bit when I called up Marcy and made an appointment to get my hair cut again. As it turned out, she had an opening yesterday afternoon, so I got on the bus and headed down there, then stopped off for some happy hour at Keegan’s on the way home to spend the evening watching TV.

It’s an exciting life I lead, isn’t it? But hey, today I get a new drier and if the weather holds decent, get to weed the garden and mow the lawn. The excitement just keeps on rolling.

The New York Post has an article on How Media Get Iraq Wrong, mostly by writing (or accepting) stories from reporters who are nowhere near the actual situation they’re writing about. The Marine who wrote this article has a different view of the situation over there. [instapundit]

I saw the headline Piece of public art stolen from Minneapolis display and wondered… Sure enough, it’s one of the sculptures in Marcy-Holmes that Aldo Moroni did as part of the 6th Avenue project. If someone tries to sell you a 250 pound bronze scuplture of Our Lady of Lourdes Catholic Church, you should probably punch that someone in the groin. Or call 911. The PiPress article Church, community ‘ripped off’ has more.

Here’s a way to update SpamAssassin’s rules every day with the Rules Du Jour. That looks like it might be a simpler solution than installing a completely new system… [holy schmoly]

The long weekend following a week out of town at a conference is over. It’s time to get back to work for the first time in almost two weeks (I took a couple days off before the conference to get ready to leave town), and I’m trying to struggle back into the groove that’s required to get work done. It helps a big that the Saints are mostly in town on weekends this month, so I won’t have too many distractions during the week, but I’ve got (once again) a backlog of stuff to deal with this morning. Guess there’s nothing for it but to dive in.

Dudley Hiibel tells his story again in He fought the law, and the law won. It’s a nice, clear, well-written explanation of what his court-case was about, and why his loss is a loss for all of us. [endwar]

The story of Purna Raj Bajracharya, In F.B.I., Innocent Detainee Found Unlikely Ally, is pretty sad. It’s nice that the FBI agent who initially hauled him in helped him out, but I don’t think that’s enough. He shouldn’t have been imprisoned in the first place, and it should never have been made secret. We don’t have Secret Police in the America I want to live in. [endwar]

Bruce Schneier covers the same topic in Unchecked police and military power is a security threat, because Surely none of us wants to live under a government with the right to arrest anyone at any time for any reason, and to hold them without trial indefinitely. Sometimes I wonder. There are far too many people who seem willing to give the government whatever power it asks for if it promises to make them feel safe.

Bruce also explains how new laws are CLEARly muddying the fight against terror, turning local police into La Migra. The problem is that doing so will make illegals less likely to call the police about other problems, and probably won’t help much against terrorism.

The Muse of Malaise reviews The Real Jimmy Carter: How Our Worst Ex-President Undermines American Foreign Policy, Coddles Dictators, and Created the Party of Clinton and KerryISBN:0895260905. I wish I’d had this review on hand when we were discussing who the worst president of our lifetimes was over beers a few weeks back. Heck, just mentioning stagflation might have swayed the discussion. That alone could easily make him worst since Hoover. [kim]

I wasn’t planning on posting at all today, but this is so typical of the way things work that I had to mention it. This morning, I started doing all the laundry I had from the week out of town. When I put the first load in the drier and hit the “start” button, the clothes started going around again, but the fire wouldn’t light, so it was just cold air going over the clothes.

This has happened before, and I’ve had Minnegasco out twice to fix the drier. They’re stumped, since it usually works fine when a repairman is here, and only fails on weekends and holidays. In any case, I’d had enough. Rather than the more satisfying approach of using the drier for target practice, I headed over to Warners’ Stellian to order a new one. Almost $500 later, a new drier will be delivered to me on Wednesday, but I’ll either have to hook it up myself or pay someone around another $100 to connect it. Whatever. I’ll have a drier that should always work, and that’s worth quite a bit to me.

But here’s the kicker. When I got home and tried the drier one last time, it fired up on the first try. Works flawlessly now. If anyone wants a gas drier that’s inhabited by gremlins, it’s yours for picking it up. Just let me know before 8am on Wednesday, or I’ll let them haul it away.

And since I had to write this up, I figure what the heck, I’ll post some links for the day, too. Enjoy.

Want to be able to read a Chinese menu? Mei Wah is the class for you. I pointed to it before, but now it’s complete, and I still think it looks pretty good. [flutterby]

Every now and again, Reed and I will talk about Programmer Fonts and it seems this time around that Bitstream Vera is one of the better open-source fonts. [reed]

In Slumming With The Peasants, Kim du Toit has some commentary on John Kerry’s recent attempts to show he’s a reg’lar gun-totin’, ordinary Joseph. Why is it politicians who obviously never go shooting even try to portray themselves as knowing anything at all about guns? They invariably screw up and look worse for it. [endwar]

Who was the greatest president? Silent Cal Had a Lot To Say, cut the size of government, reduced the deficit, and by the end of his term had 98% of Americans paying no income tax. We need another like him, without a Hoover to screw it all up afterwards. [claire]

Yesterday was some day. There was conference during the day, including plenty of visiting around, and then the Apple Beer Bash in the evening. I still don’t understand why they even bother to pay for a band there, since the goal of the thing is ostensibly to let developers talk to Apple engineers (like Keith, who Explained a number of things), but the volume from the band prevents any sort of normal conversation.

After getting my fill of beer at Apple, I got on the bus and headed back to The City. After arriving, I stopped at the 4th St. Bar & Deli to use their facilities and then get a shot. There was a toilet on the bus, but I seem to have problems peeing when being slammed around a room smaller than the inside of a Miata.

Once that shot was finished, I stumbled back to the Powell and made for bed. But as I was walking through the lobby, I saw the clerk who I liked so much last year and the year before working the desk. Turns out his name is Gerry, and he’s been transferred to the graveyard shift this year, which is why I hadn’t seen him so far. He’s doing well, and we chatted for about ten minutes, catching up on each others’ lives. It pretty much made my week, since I’d had a sort of low-level worry that something had happened to him, but seeing him again made all well with the world again. Gerry, if you happen to read this, once again, you’re a big part of what makes the Powell my hotel of choice in San Francisco.

Well, once again, I find myself verging on the maudlin, so I guess it’s time to get to the links…

I’ve griped about gratuitous patents more than once, but not all patents are bad. Take a look at these Sex Patents dug up by fleshbot (again, probably when you’re not at work). [boing boing]

There’s a new, federally-funded organization called Highway Watch is turning 400,000 truckers into the Eyes And Ears Of The Nation. So when that knock comes at your door in the middle of the night, it might be because you cut off a semi?

WWDC continues to plow along. Yesterday was a fairly slow day. I only went to one of the five possible sessions during the day. It wasn’t that there weren’t any interesting sessions, but more that I’ve reached saturation already, and have started being a lot more picky about what I’m going to attend. Usually this happens about Thursday during the week, but this week it came early. Then again, I think maybe it was Wednesday when I hit the wall last year, too.

There are other things I’ve been thinking about too. While all the new technology is interesting, I’ve been noticing (and I’m far from alone in this) the lack of gals at the conference. On Tuesday night, during “Stump the Experts”, the show was running behind, and there were too many prizes to be given away in the remaining time. Someone in the audience suggested giving a prize to every woman in the room. While there weren’t quite that many extra prizes, it was a close enough thing that Fred and Mark actually thought about it for a bit. That’s a fairly depressing comment on the state of the geek community. And yeah, some of the women were offended by it. It’s tough to be a gal in the geek world, I guess.

That’s not to say there are no women around here, but many of the ones who are here during the day haven’t been going to the “geekier” sessions or sticking around for traditions like “Stump”. I don’t know what to do about it, but it seems that there are more younger women than older, and I fear it’s a matter of women leaving the field as they get older. It doesn’t seem right to me, but I have been encouraged the past couple years to see more college-age women attending WWDC.

Enough philosophical rambling for now. The other thing that happened yesterday was a busy evening. I had drinks with Dan Lyke after I was done with the conference for the day, and Ingrid stopped by with a couple of her developers. It was a great evening, especially Zebulon, the bar that Dan took us to, and while it wasn’t that late of an evening, I find myself thinking that just about the time I finish adpating to left-coast time, it’ll be time to head home. I’m not relishing it, but I figure the fact that I’m taking the red-eye home will do a pretty thorough job of resetting my body-clock anyhow.

In any case, if you’re wondering if Dan is a real person, I can verify that he is, and he’s a heckuva guy to boot. We had some geektastic conversation, plus some more real-world talks, and I’m pretty happy to call him a new friend.

Well, that’s the update from me. Thanks again to Dan for the swell conversation and for being a great native guide to San Francisco, but now it’s time for some links, eh?

NASA’s been working on automated Antenna Design, and have come up with some pretty cool stuff. Fun for the radio geek in all of us. [boing boing]

Even though it wasn’t the Kerry campaign that was doing it, here’s another reason not to vote for Kerry. As Conrad points out, the Kerry campaign had damned well better get involved if they don’t want a storm of negative publicity out of the deal. [gweilodiaries]

Here’s a fun little story about a FOIA request, and the DOJ’s response: Our Computer Ate the Info. Apparently they’re storing the information in a database that’s so fragile that simply making a backup copy could make the entire computer explode. Or something like that. [wired]

Woo! The FTC mulls bounty system to combat spammers, offering twenty percent of the damages they recover from the spammer. Okay, maybe it’s not the best way to combat spam, but I think it’s another tool, and one that might help get a few people shut down. [slashdot]

What’s brinigng on New Media's Age of Anxiety? A bunch of bogus stories that have been published as news. In the first of a weekly series, Adam L. Penenberg takes a look at media in today’s world. [wired]